I didn’t support the strike from day one. We didn’t submit a bid for a crime duty contract because of the many pitfalls in the proposal and the risk it poses to any firm ’awarded’ the contract.

I was sceptical as to the involvement of the Big Firm Group, which appears to want the elimination of all competition so the group’s members can have all the work as opposed to competing and winning work through expertise and ability (what you might, as a Conservative, call market forces).

I’ve tried to get CLSA/LCCSA to raise the proposition of withdrawing crime duty contract tender bids with the profession as a tactic which I sincerely believe would cause the MoJ to renegotiate much of Grayling’s reforms to fees and fee structure and scope of legal aid in criminal cases.

I don’t believe the current strike will achieve anything other than perhaps a delay in cuts.

I also don’t accept the economic lie that there is over-supply of providers and that consolidation is required. This seems to me to be BFG propaganda for the advancement of their own interests above those of the profession and of clients. In simple terms BFG members only care about their own survival and in getting bigger. The MoJ has bought into the concept because cutting legal aid spend is their main aim and anything that promises that is worth pursuing.

I say to BFG, face up to the economic reality of open competition and cut your cloth accordingly. You can’t demand that the market is restructured to suit you. There are plenty of people willing to fight to prevent market domination by a few firms.

To those solicitors on strike I pose these questions: if the withdrawal of crime duty contract tender bids is the most effective weapon in our arsenal, why has it not been deployed? Why has it not been proposed by CLSA/LCCSA? Why has its worth as a tactic been challenged by BFG?

What is this strike actually designed to achieve?

I want the profession to take real action to bring Gove to the negotiating table and I believe that can only be done by breaking the crime duty contract tender process. Nothing else will work.

Michael Robinson, Partner, Emmersons Solicitors

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